


The Airbending Master

by LizBee



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Canon Character of Color, Gen, Genocide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-20
Updated: 2011-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-15 23:05:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/165777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizBee/pseuds/LizBee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Teaching airbenders is not the same as restoring the Air Nomads</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Airbending Master

Technically, Aang had been a master since he was ten, but this was his first time as a teacher.

Suddenly he had a lot more sympathy for Monk Gyatso. And Katara, and Jeong Jeong, and Pakku, and Toph, and Zuko.

"You have to detach," he said, for what felt like the fifteenth time that hour. "Let go of everything that holds you down to the physical world. Then let go of everything that weighs down your mind."

For a few minutes, the only sound was the breath of his student and the wind in the temple. Aang closed his eyes. Okay. Maybe this teaching thing wasn't so bad after all.

Then there was a giggle.

He opened his eyes.

"Ty Lee," he said, trying very hard to sound detached and wise and _not annoyed_ , "I'm pretty sure you're meant to be the right way up for this exercise."

"Sorry, Aang," she said, righting herself. The air cushion she created to sit on was almost perfect, considering she hadn't even been recognised as an airbender until she was sixteen. Except, of course, that apart from the elderly or disabled, Air Nomads didn't use cushions for meditation.

As a kid, the monks had accused Aang of turning tradition and ritual upside down. He was beginning to wonder if maybe this was some kind of revenge.

"Aang," said Ty Lee, reaching over and squeezing his arm, "I may be an airbender, but I'm not an Air Nomad. I can't just -- replace myself like that."

But she could, Aang thought sadly: she had run away from her parents, she had travelled across the world with Azula, she had lived on Kyoshi Island. She had come with him to the Southern Air Temple. The culture of the Air Nomads was in her spirit, as surely as airbending was in her blood.

"What you build here will be new," she said. "We can remember and honour our ancestors, but we can't be them."

She didn't say, _You have to let go._

The essence of airbending, he had been told, was flexibility.

He breathed deep and listened to the wind.

 _end_


End file.
